Paradoxes

Recently, I lost two people I love very much. One felt that a relationship with someone living abroad just wasn’t practical enough, and the other was forced to stop talking to me over our long-distance friendship. You just can’t win!

Even though it sucks for me, I understand ditching a long-distance relationship with someone you only knew for a few weeks, especially if you’re not in love. I mean, really, what would be the point? What I don’t understand, on the other hand, is forcing a person to stop being friends with another, particularly when those friends are thousands of miles away, separated by the Atlantic ocean.

Even worse, giving someone an ultimatum to end a friendship after taking their phone without permission and reading their messages is disgusting. I find it gross. It’s hard enough for me to go through my children’s phones to make sure they’re behaving, so I can’t imagine how dirty I’d feel if I spied on someone else’s without their knowledge. In doing that, not only do you violate your partner’s privacy, but their friends’ too.

You know, it is possible for your boyfriend or girlfriend to have other friends that are not you. And those friends might never tell you the personal things they share with your other half. Why? Maybe because they don’t know you, they don’t like you, or, as in my case, both.

On the bright side, these types of situations are wonderful opportunities to talk with my kids about the importance of being nice, self-confident, open, and respectful people.

As someone I adore (and still talks to me) once told me, all relationships have an expiration date, whether in love or friendship. If you’re lucky, death would be the reason why the relationship ends. Unfortunately, distance, anger, jealousy, mistrust, or fear are often at fault in the demise of something good.

All you can do is your best. And when that fails, leave.

• ← Udaleku 2017 Registration begins today, March 1
• The 2017 program of the Eloise Garmendia Bieter Chair will start in Boise this week →